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Enhancing Connections through Perkins V: The Crucial Role of Stakeholder Engagement

Monday, April 1st, 2024

The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, commonly known as Perkins V, marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Career Technical Education (CTE) in the United States. Enacted to empower learners with the skills needed for success in a rapidly changing workforce, Perkins V emphasizes the importance of “stakeholder engagement” in shaping and implementing effective CTE programs.

In this blog post, Director of Member Engagement and Professional Learning Dr. Stephanie Perkins explores the key aspects of this activity in Perkins V and its impact on fostering a dynamic and responsive educational ecosystem.

The Role of Stakeholders

Stakeholder engagement in Perkins V is not merely a checkbox but a fundamental driver of success for CTE programs. These partners play a vital role in the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of these programs. By bringing together diverse perspectives, stakeholders contribute valuable insights that help create a comprehensive and well-rounded educational experience for learners.

Educators are at the forefront of this initiative, working closely with industry partners to design curricula that blend academic knowledge with practical skills. Employers, in turn, provide crucial input on the skills and competencies needed in the workforce, ensuring that CTE programs produce graduates who are not only academically proficient but also well-prepared for real-world challenges.

Community members and parents are also essential partners, offering valuable insights into the local context and helping bridge the gap between education and community needs. Their involvement ensures that CTE programs are culturally relevant and aligned with the aspirations of the learners they serve.

Benefits of Stakeholder Engagement

Relevance and Responsiveness: Engaging with those impacted by CTE ensures that CTE programs stay abreast of industry trends and technological advancements. This responsiveness is crucial for preparing learners with the technical and employability skills demanded by the evolving job market. Additionally, by involving employers in the educational process, Perkins V helps bridge the gap between classroom learning and workplace demands. This alignment is vital for reducing the skills gap and increasing the employability of CTE graduates.
Diverse Perspectives: Stakeholder engagement brings together a diverse range of perspectives, enriching the educational experience. This diversity ensures that CTE programs are designed and cater to the needs of all learners, regardless of their background or aspirations. When directly involved in CTE programs, these partners can allow each learner to see themselves in every career.
Community Support: Engaging community members and parents builds a strong support system for CTE programs. This support is crucial for sustaining and expanding these initiatives, fostering a sense of collective responsibility for the success of learners. Additionally, connecting community resources as a part of wraparound services for learners can improve CTE programs design by helping to meet the needs of each learner.

Challenges and Strategies

While stakeholder engagement is pivotal, it comes with its own set of challenges. Balancing the interests of various partners, addressing conflicting priorities and ensuring sustained commitment can be daunting. To overcome these challenges, communication and collaboration are key. Regular forums, advisory boards, and partnerships can facilitate ongoing dialogue, allowing impacted parties to contribute meaningfully to the CTE ecosystem.

Perkins V heralds a new era in CTE, emphasizing the significance of stakeholder engagement in shaping successful programs. By fostering collaboration among educators, employers, community members, and parents, Perkins V ensures that CTE remains a dynamic and responsive force in preparing learners for the challenges of the modern workforce. Through ongoing dialogue and collective effort, partners contribute to the creation of a robust and relevant educational ecosystem that empowers students to thrive in their chosen careers.

Advance CTE supports states in developing and executing comprehensive, ongoing, and impactful state engagement that begins in Perkins V but can ultimately broaden input and partnership in all work. This year, we have released a suite of supports designed to ensure your Perkins state plan serves as a powerful lever to achieve your state vision for career technical education, and more broadly CTE Without Limits. These supports include:

Monthly Perkins Planning Office Hours,
Opportunities for one-on-one discussion on Perkins data and State Determined Performance Levels (SDPLs) for members,
New mini-briefs on strategies to support special populations in CTE, and more.

Additional resources can be found in the Perkins V section of the Learning that Works Resource Center.

Dr. Stephanie Perkins, Director of Member Engagement and Professional Learning

By Stacy Whitehouse in Public Policy
Tags: Access and Equity, Industry Collaboration, partnerships, Perkins V, Stakeholder engagement

Perkins Regional Meetings April and May 2023: Key Takeaways

Thursday, June 8th, 2023

Over April and May 2023, Advance CTE hosted three Perkins Regional Meetings across the country in Minneapolis, Baltimore and Phoenix, with over 200 leaders from across 40 states and territories which was made possible through support from the Gates Foundation. The agenda for the three meetings was designed for state leaders from secondary, postsecondary and workforce development to connect and collaborate on ways to enhance their current Career Technical Education (CTE) systems and programs.

States participated in keynote presentations, workshops, roundtables focused on supporting special populations and cross-state sharing sessions with the intent of building and strengthening the career preparation ecosystem for all learners across the nation. State leaders and our Advance CTE team were both energized by the engagement and inspired by the dedication of all those that attended the meetings and are working to create a high-quality and equitable system that supports all CTE learners.

While each state has its own unique challenges, accomplishments and opportunities, certain recurring themes emerged across multiple states. The national CTE landscape is one of great opportunity but will need support to provide access to high-quality experiences for all CTE learners.

Key Takeaways

Accomplishments

Strong partnerships and support between private industry, education and government leaders to support economic development
Implementation of needed improvements garnered from Comprehensive Local Needs Assessments (CLNA) at the state and local levels
Collaboration and cooperation among state workforce agencies and departments of education and higher education during the Perkins Regional Meetings
Work-based learning (WBL) program guidance on how to focus staffing and funding resources

Challenges

CTE instructor training, recruitment and retention
Staff turnover at both the local and state level
Data management, collection and utilization
Collaboration between secondary, postsecondary and workforce development
Capacity building to meet the demands of learners and region-specific needs

Using the information gained at these meetings, CTE leaders will be able to build upon the accomplishments and help provide resources, tools and support to address the challenges within the current system, with an eye towards how states will leverage the potential to revise or update their Perkins V state plans as their original four-year plans come to a close next spring. Advance CTE continues to be available as a resource to provide best practices, information on innovative policies on the horizon and technical assistance to states to achieve our shared vision of Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education (CTE Without Limits).

As states work to address the challenges they face, Advance CTE has numerous resources available below and through the Learning that Works Resource Center to assist with goal set and challenges identified during the meeting:

Perkins V Supports Teacher Recruitment and Retention
This resource discusses the mechanisms in Perkins V that support teacher recruitment and retention, an overview of how this appears in Perkins V state plans and examples of how states are tackling the challenge of recruiting and retaining qualified and diverse CTE instructors.
Championing High-Quality Data
This brief addresses the importance of a unifying vision for education and workforce that draws upon and regularly uses postsecondary CTE data to measure progress and guide state policy and practice.
Beyond the Numbers: Design Principles for CTE Data Reporting and A Toolkit for Communicating CTE Data
This report, developed with input from a shared solutions workgroup of national and state experts, provides nine principles for developing effective and accessible CTE data reporting tools. A companion toolkit contains guidance, best practices and tools that CTE leaders can use to create communications to help stakeholders better understand and act on CTE data.
Coordinating Across Perkins V and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
This guide looks at six opportunities to promote coordination across Perkins V and WIOA as states develop and implement plans under Perkins V.
Strengthening Career Pathways Through the Power of State and Local Partnerships
This resource is the third in a series of policy briefs centered on strengthening career pathways. It offers promising practices for leveraging the strengths of state and local leaders to cultivate sustainable, scalable partnerships and advance high-quality career pathways.

Save the Date for our next in-person opportunity to connect and receive support from Advance CTE! Our 2023 Fall Meeting: Elevating CTE’s Impact, will be held October 16-18 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Paul Mattingly, Senior Policy Associate

By Layla Alagic in Uncategorized
Tags: career pathways, CLNA, CTE instruction, CTE Without Limits, Data Collection, data quality, Industry Collaboration, Learning that Works Resource Center, Perkins, Perkins V, Postsecondary Education, Secondary, turnover, WIOA, work-based learning, workforce development

Getting to Know Advance CTE and State Technical Assistance

Thursday, January 20th, 2022

The “Getting to Know” blog series will feature the work of State CTE Directors, state and federal policies, innovative programs and new initiatives from the Advance CTE staff. Learn more about each one of these topics and the unique contributions to advancing Career Technical Education (CTE) that Advance CTE’s members work on every day.

Meet Nithya Govindasamy! Nithya is a Senior Advisor at Advance CTE; she recently joined the organization in October 2021. Nithya leads and manages major organization-wide, highly visible initiatives that support, promote and increase equitable access to and success in high-quality CTE, which includes: workforce development, education and equity initiatives; technical assistance (TA) for Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education (CTE Without Limits); efforts to maximize the stimulus investments; and Advance CTE’s external equity strategy.

In this month’s edition of the CTEWorks Newsletter, we share resources, tools and supports to foster continuous improvement and collaboration among stakeholders in the career preparation ecosystem. This work includes the TA Advance CTE will deliver to states implementing CTE Without Limits. Learn more in the interview with Nithya below:

Q: How does the shared vision, CTE Without Limits, promote the value of collaboration, equity and innovation in states?

A: CTE Without Limits lays out a bold vision for a cohesive, flexible, and responsive career preparation ecosystem that will close equity gaps in educational outcomes and workforce readiness, and leverage CTE to ensure that every learner can reach success in the career of their choice.

The five inter-connected and equally critical principles call for our education and workforce system to collaborate and leverage their assets and take an innovative approach to ensuring that the learner can achieve career success.

Q: What are the benefits of statewide structures that increase collaboration and coordination across K-12, postsecondary and workforce development to support a career preparation ecosystem?

A: States that invest in structures and systems to increase strategic collaboration and coordination across the K-12, postsecondary and workforce development continuum will be able to better serve the needs of each learner and the employer community.

Each partner within the statewide structure serves a unique role in the career preparation ecosystem and greater connectivity means learners can access the support they need at any of the entry points. Collaboration between the education and workforce system also provides an avenue for industry to connect with future talent in a systematic way. Statewide structures that build these meaningful interconnections can benefit by accessing additional non-traditional funding and resources that are targeted towards incentivizing collaboration and establishing and meeting aligned goals.

As a benefit all CTE leaders across the 50 states and territories, Advance CTE shares best practices and policy innovations from exemplar states (and partnering organizations) that have successfully embraced collaboration and partnerships, coordinated services, and support to benefit each learner (especially those from historically marginalized populations).

Q: As the organization begins to provide technical assistance to the cohort of states, what are the objectives and goals that Advance CTE hopes to achieve?

A: Advance CTE hopes to assist states and our members to advance and implement the principles in CTE Without Limits within their state. Our goal is to support states, and their cross-sector teams, to bridge gaps in their systems to ensure all learners have equitable access to and can benefit from high-quality CTE. Through the community of practice that will be launched this February, we hope to identify and lift up best practices among states and inspire leaders and practitioners to take bold actions to design and implement a new career preparation ecosystem that is learner-focused and can offer endless opportunities.

Q: How will the TA help build capacity within states to develop and strengthen their cohesive, flexible and responsive career preparation ecosystems?

A: The TA delivered will provide states an opportunity to engage in a deeper needs assessment that will identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as well as the root causes for gaps and barriers that exist in their current systems. Each state will have access to a dedicated coach as part of this initiative who will work with the state team to develop a strategic and solutions-oriented plan to address the specific needs and priorities expressed by each state.

Q: Are there resources and supports for state and local leaders outside of the TA cohort who are beginning to implement the principles outlined in CTE Without Limits?

A: Yes! The community of practice that will be part of this initiative will be open to all states and not just the TA cohort states. The community of practice will be a great opportunity for states to engage in discussion with other states about how they are tackling various components within the vision as well as learn from fellow members. Advance CTE will also continue to host webinars and post blogs that will focus on CTE Without Limits and share strategies and approaches with state leaders to help implement vision principles broadly across systems. States can also reach me directly at ngovindasamy@careertech.org if there’s a need for specific guidance or assistance.

Brittany Cannady, Senior Associate Digital Media

By admin in Uncategorized
Tags: CTE Without Limits, Industry Collaboration, postsecondary, Secondary, systems alignment

Exploring Area Technical Centers: Elevating ATCs in a National Economic Recovery

Wednesday, March 10th, 2021

The transformative workforce changes resulting from the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic have made it more urgent than ever for states to have a comprehensive strategy for reskilling and upskilling that unites stakeholders across education, workforce development and economic development. Advance CTE has been vocal that investment in secondary and postsecondary Career Technical Education (CTE) is critical to a national recovery strategy.

ATC Positioning in the Workforce Development System

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many things in our way of life, including the education or training path most Americans will pursue to return to work. A typical economic recovery would have millions of Americans flocking to traditional higher education programs but instead, in this post-pandemic economic recovery, the majority of Americans say they will seek non-degree and skill-based education and training programs to reskill or upskill their way back to a good job.

Area technical centers (ATCs) should be part of this solution – helping more Americans secure non-degree credentials of value. Our national analysis found that in the states where ATCs serve an adult population, these institutions provide short-term credentials and programs below the level of an associate’s degree, and are uniquely positioned to be nimble and responsive to changing workforce needs. Further, these institutions are accessible, by design serving a region, and low-cost, with few or no barriers to admission for adult learners and affordable tuition rates as low as $2.00 per seat hour. ATCs can and should be better leveraged to serve those who have been disproportionately impacted by job losses associated with the pandemic, particularly Black and Latinx workers, workers with a high school education or less, and female workers.

Leveraging Federal Funding

Funding matters, and in states that have leveraged federal funds, we see ATCs being key players in meeting the state’s short- and long-term workforce priorities.

For example, all of Ohio’s Ohio technical colleges (OTCs) and selected programs in Delaware’s ATCs are eligible training providers under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Many ATCs are eligible for federal financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, including institutions in Florida, Ohio and Utah most commonly accredited by the Council on Occupational Education.

Some states have utilized 2020 federal stimulus funding to reinforce their ATCs as valuable institutions in an economic recovery. Delaware leveraged $10 million of its federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic relief funding to support its Forward Delaware initiative, a set of rapid training and credentialing programs focused on in-demand occupations and skills in the state. Florida’s governor designated Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER) funds provided through the CARES Act to award grants to its ATCs, known as technical colleges, to establish or enhance rapid credentialing programs that lead to a short-term certificate or industry-recognized certification as part of its statewide Get There campaign.

Utilizing ATCs in Statewide Workforce Training Programs

ATCs have strong connections to their local communities and employers by design and often offer customized training programs to meet those needs.

Oklahoma’s State Training for Industry Growth (TIG) program provides funding to their ATCs, known as technology centers, to administer short term employee training programs for businesses experiencing skill shortages. The state CTE agency also offers a Training for Industry Program (TIP) that utilizes technology centers as business incubators and employee training providers for designated high-demand industries; over 4,000 employees were trained in FY20.
Utah’s Custom Fit program allows employers to utilize technical colleges to provide employee training at no cost to the employee. Each technical college employs a program director which is partially supported through state funding, and at least 50 percent of the training costs are paid by the employer. Over 19,000 employees participated in this program in FY19.
Ohio provides not only an employee training program, but an opportunity for its Ohio technical centers (OTCs) to participate in more strategic workforce initiatives. An OTC can be designated a Center for Training Excellence, making them eligible for up to $500,000 in state funding that is matched by the OTC to offer custom training and consulting to local employers. Ohio’s Regionally Aligned Priorities in Delivering Skills (RAPIDS) program looks at the bigger picture by providing $8 million in equipment investments to postsecondary institutions to retain, attract, and strengthen industry and support workforce development initiatives. OTCs are able to participate by partnering with a community college.

To recover from the devastation of the coronavirus will require persistence, creativity and leveraging all public assets to ensure a full and equitable economic recovery. States should be learning from one another – what worked and what didn’t – and leveraging their public assets, including ATCs to every learner with the opportunity to access a career pathway that leads to sustained, living-wage employment in an in-demand field.

To find the ATCs in your state and to access the full report and additional resources, please visit www.areatechnicalcenters.org . To read other posts in this series, please check out our Medium post that breaks down the major findings, and our blog post on leveraging ATCs to advance state postsecondary attainment goals.

By Stacy Whitehouse in COVID-19 and CTE
Tags: Delaware, Economic Recovery, Florida, funding, Industry Collaboration, Job training, Ohio, Oklahoma, Postsecondary Education, Public Policy, Utah, workforce

SkillsUSA: How Industry Collaboration Creates Opportunity for the Future of CTE

Tuesday, June 28th, 2016

SkillsUSA Construction For students in high-skill career pathways, winning an invitation to the SkillsUSA national competition is one of the biggest honors in their field. Not only does the annual competition give students an opportunity to showcase their talent in different trades but it also demonstrates what the future of Career Technical Education (CTE) can be: a coordinated, cross-sector effort to put learner success first.

This yearâ€™s SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Louisville, Kentucky â€”Â the 52nd annual competition â€”Â featured more than 6,000 competitors, 4,000 teachers and advisers, and 600 national industry leaders from across the United States. In two days of fierce competition, students took to the exposition floor to demonstrate their mastery in a variety of skilled trades: Automated Manufacturing Technology, Culinary Arts, Health Occupations, Mechatronics, Web Design and Welding, to name a few.

What stood out throughout the conference was not only the passion from competitors and their advisers, but also the relationships that students, educators and conference organizers had with industry leaders in each field. Business and industry representatives were highly engaged, contributing generous prize packages for winners in each category, partnering with SkillsUSA National to align competition criteria to industry standards, and providing judges for each competition. Further, many industry leaders could be seen on the exposition floor throughout the week, observing competitions and scoping out future hires.

While students demonstrated their skills on the competition floor, SkillsUSA allowed CTE thought leaders to demonstrate their own wins through SkillsUSA University sessions. In one such session, Dan Belcher of the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) laid out a 12-step plan for facilitating cross-sector collaboration, informed by his experience in the construction industry. He suggested that organizations can start by identifying their needs: the specific skills and knowledge they want to teach their students. This will prepare them to discuss and maximize areas of collaboration with industry partners. On the industry side, organizations should evaluate the resources — equipment, mentorship, strategic guidance, etc. — that they are willing to bring to the table. Such cross-sector collaboration will help streamline pathways from education to career and ensure future success for CTE students. Other sessions included discussions on engaging nontraditional students, engaging the community, and adapting to new assessments.

Advance CTEâ€™s updated Vision, Putting Learner Success First: A Shared Vision for the Future of CTE, describes a future in which CTE programs are held to the highest standards of excellence and all systems work together to support learner success. The SkillsUSA conference provides an encouraging snapshot of what this world will look like, with industry experts and educators alike working together to prepare students for their futures. The task remains to take this successful model and apply it nationwide so that all students can access the opportunity that CTE provides.

Austin Estes, Policy Associate

By admin in Uncategorized
Tags: Employer Engagement, Industry Collaboration, Kentucky, NCCER, Putting Learner Success First, skillsusa

Posts Tagged ‘Industry Collaboration’